This disclosure relates generally to social networking systems, and in particular to statistical modeling based on actions of users of a social networking system.
A social networking system typically has access to large amounts of information describing actions performed by users that may be of interest to other users of the social networking system or to third parties. These actions include photo and video uploads, status updates, transactions, wall posts, posting of comments, recommendations, likes indicated on other users' photos, videos, and the like. The social networking system stores other types of information that is likely to be of interest to users, for example, activities related to social groups or events represented in the social networking system. The social networking system presents social information as content items such as news feed stories.
Users of the social networking system may provide user profile information, such as age and gender, to the system when joining the system and afterwards. The system may select content items for presentation to users based on the user profile information. For example, a content item targeted to females may be selected to be presented to users who indicate that their gender is female in their user profile information. However, stories selected only based on user profile information may not be the stories that users are most interested in and likely to interact with.